Optical coherence tomography (OCT) system and method that measure stimulus-evoked neural activity and hemodynamic responses
AssigneeThe Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
InventorsXincheng Yao, Tae Yun Son
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A multi-modal functional OCT imaging methodology and system are provided that enable concurrent intrinsic optical signal (IOS) imaging of stimulus-evoked neural activity and hemodynamic responses at capillary resolution. An OCT angiography (OCTA)-guided IOS analysis is used to separate neural-IOS and hemodynamic-IOS changes in the same retinal image sequence. The OCTA-guided IOS data processing used for this purpose differentiates two functional images, namely, a neural-IOS map and a hemodynamic-IOS map, from the same image dataset.
Claims12
A multi-modal optical coherence tomography (OCT) system configured to provide dynamic mapping of hemodynamic responses, the system comprising:
- a light source;
- a coupler;
- a sample arm comprising:
- at least one scanning mirror,
- a dichroic mirror, and
- a retinal stimulator that generates flicker light stimulation coupled into at least one eye of a subject through the dichroic mirror;
- a reference arm;
- a spectrometer;
- wherein the coupler divides a light beam coming from the light source into a sample light beam directed to the sample arm and a reference light beam directed to the reference arm;
- wherein the sample light beam passes through the at least one scanning mirror and is coupled into the at least one eye of the subject by the dichroic mirror;
- and
- wherein the spectrometer receives an interference spectrum returning from the sample and reference arms;
- and
- processing circuitry including a processor and a memory having program instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the multi-modal OCT system to:
- acquire raw spectrum image data from the spectrometer;
- generate OCT images from the raw spectrum image data;
- and
- process the OCT images to map hemodynamic responses of the eye evoked by the flicker light stimulation.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.